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Joshua McCarter Simpson's Songs and Mid-Nineteenth Century Antislavery Activism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2024
Abstract
The Ohio-based Black songwriter, Joshua Simpson, published two books of antislavery songs in the mid-nineteenth century, Original Anti-Slavery Songs in 1852 and Emancipation Car in 1854. Unlike most other known songsters, which were compilations of poetry from several authors, Simpson authored original lyrics for borrowed melodies, and he did so with extraordinary care, engaging the original song to enhance his activist messages. Employing the rhetorical practice of signification, his linkage of new lyrics with preexisting songs sometimes builds upon meaning from the original text, reusing it to add weight to the moral and political arguments against slavery. He also extends nature imagery and lyrics about the comforts of home and family in traditional ballads and contemporary sentimental songs to his new lyrics, but more often his signifying practice is ironic. He inverts the original song's sentimentality in deliberately discomforting ways that could persuade Americans to assist self-emancipating people and work toward wholescale abolition of slavery. Simpson's most radical songs talk back irreverently to the originals, especially minstrel tunes containing degrading caricatures and proslavery propaganda as well as patriotic anthems proclaiming hypocritical platitudes. Simpson did not simply write new songs; he transformed some of the most popular and beloved songs of his era, harnessing their renown to sharpen his activist messages.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Music
References
References
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Saunders, Steven. “The Social Agenda of Stephen Foster's Plantation Melodies.” American Music 30, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 275–89.Google Scholar
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Sinha, Manisha. The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jon Michael. Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.Google Scholar
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Turner, Kristen M. “‘Dandy Jim’ and Racialized Abolitionism.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Music, online, March 12, 2022.Google Scholar
Winch, Julie. Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America from Settlement to the Civil War. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.Google Scholar
Allen, George N. Oberlin Social and Sabbath School Hymn Book. Oberlin, OH: James Fitch, 1846.Google Scholar
“Away to Canada.” Liberator. Dec. 10, 1832.Google Scholar
Bradbury, William B. The Singing Book for Boys and Girls Meetings. New York: Ivison and Phinney, 1854.Google Scholar
“Come, Come, Away.” Baltimore: F. D. Benteen, 1844.Google Scholar
Foster, Stephen C. “Hard Times Come Again No More.” New York: Firth, Pond, and Co., 1854.Google Scholar
Foster, Stephen C. “Oh Susanna.” Baltimore: F. D. Benteen, n.d.Google Scholar
“Fugitive Slave Case.” Ohio State Journal. March 12, 1855.Google Scholar
“Hail Columbia!” Philadelphia: G. E. Blake, 1840.Google Scholar
Himes, Joshua V. Millennial Harp: Designed for Meetings on the Second Coming Christ. Boston: n.p., 1846.Google Scholar
Himes, Joshua V. The Advent Harp: Designed for Believers in the Speedy Coming of Christ. Boston: n.p., 1849.Google Scholar
“The Last Rose of Summer.” New York: J. L. Peters, 1867.Google Scholar
“The Late Slave Case.” Ohio State Journal. March 16, 1855.Google Scholar
Mansfield, D. H. The American Vocalist: A Selection of Tunes, Anthems, Sentences, and Hymns, Old and New: Designed for the Church, the Vestry, or the Parlor; Adapted to Every Variety of Metre in Common Use. Boston: Thompson, Bigelow and Brown, 1849.Google Scholar
Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio. Columbus: E. Glover, 1851. Accessed June 27, 2023. https://omeka.coloredconventions.orgGoogle Scholar
Moscheles, J. “Sweet Birds Are Singing.” Philadelphia: G. Willig, n.d.Google Scholar
Proceedings of a Convention of the Colored Men of Ohio. Cincinnati: A. Moore, 1865. Accessed June 27, 2023. https://omeka.coloredconventions.orgGoogle Scholar
Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men. Boston: Rock and Ruffin, 1864. Accessed June 27, 2023. https://omeka.coloredconventions.orgGoogle Scholar
Revival Melodies or Songs of Zion. Boston: John Putnam, 1842.Google Scholar
“The Rosetta Armstead Case.” Ohio State Journal. March 24, 1855.Google Scholar
Simpson, Joshua McCarter. “A Brother's Farewell.” Civil War Collection, Missouri Historical Society. Columbia, Missouri.Google Scholar
Simpson, Joshua McCarter. “A Song of Our Sentiments on the Silver Pitcher Presented to L. G. Van Slyke, Columbus, June 10, 1855,” VFM 4131, Ohio History Connection. Columbus, Ohio.Google Scholar
Simpson, Joshua McCarter. Emancipation Car: Being an Original Composition of Antislavery Ballads, Composed Exclusively for the Underground Railroad. Zanesville: n.p., 1854. Reprint, Miami: Mnemosyne Publishing Company, 1969.Google Scholar
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, edited by Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and Robbins, Hollis. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007.Google Scholar
White, Edward L. The Sunday School Singing Book: Being a Collection of Hymns with Appropriate Music, Designed as a Guide and Assistant to the Devotional Exercises of Sabbath Schools and Families. 3rd ed. Boston: William Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 1845.Google Scholar
Willis, R. Storrs. Church Chorals and Choir Studies. New York: Clark, Austin and Smith, 1850.Google Scholar
Austin, William W. Susanna, Jeanie and The Old Folks at Home: Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours. New York: Macmillan, 1975.Google Scholar
Callahan, Mat. Songs of Slavery and Emancipation. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Cima, Gay Gibson. Performing Antislavery: Activist Women on Antebellum Stages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Cumbler, John T. From Abolition to Rights for All: The Making of a Reform Community in the 19th Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickson, Bruce D. Jr. “Print Culture and the Antislavery Community: The Poetry of Abolitionism, 1831–1860.” In Prophets of Protest, edited by McCarthy, Timothy Patrick and Stauffer, John, 220–34. New York: Norton, 2006.Google Scholar
Diemar, Andrew K. The Politics of Black Citizenship: Free African Americans in the Mid-Atlantic Borderland 1817–1863. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Eaklor, Vicki L. American Antislavery Songs: A Collection and Analysis. New York: Greenwood, 1988.Google Scholar
Eaklor, Vicki L. “Introduction to Joshua Simpson's Original Antislavery Songs.” The Journal of Black Sacred Music 3, no. 1 (March 1989): 14–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Ken. Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Foreman, P. Gabrielle, Casey, Jim, and Patterson, Sarah Lynn, eds. The Colored Convention Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Fulton, Erin. “‘The Year of Jubilee Is Come’: Metatextual Resonance in Antislavery Hymn Parodies.” In Sonic Identity at the Margins, edited by Love, Joanna and Fillerup, Jessie, 75–96. New York: Bloomsbury, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gac, Scott. The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Gardner, Eric. “A Word Fitly Spoken.” In The Colored Convention Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Foreman, P. Gabrielle, Casey, Jim, and Patterson, Sarah Lynn, 72–85. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Gosse, Van and Waldstreicher, David, eds. Revolutions and Reconstructions: Black Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self Making in Nineteen-Century America. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 2022.Google Scholar
La Roche, Cheryl Janifer. Geography of Resistance: Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Roche, Cherly Janifer. “Secrets Well Kept.” In The Colored Convention Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Foreman, P. Gabrielle, Casey, Jim, and Patterson, Sarah Lynn, 246–62. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Lohman, Laura. Hail Columbia!: American Music and Politics in the Early Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Timothy Patrick and Stauffer, John. “Introduction.” In Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, edited by McCarthy, Timothy Patrick and Stauffer, John, xv–xvii. New York: Norton, 2006.Google Scholar
McClendon, Aaron D. “Sounds of Sympathy: William Wells Brown's Antislavery Harp: Abolition and the Culture of Early Antebellum American Song.” African American Review 47, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 83–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercer-Taylor, Peter. Gems of Exquisite Beauty How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport: Praeger, 2007.Google Scholar
Pinckney, Darryl. “Invisibility of Black Abolitionists.” In Abolitionist Imagination, edited by Delbanco, Andrew, 116–21. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Rael, Patrick. Black Identity and Black Protest in Antebellum North. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Ramey, Lauri. A History of African American Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Brian. Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Matt. The Black Romantic Revolution: Abolitionist Poets at the End of Slavery. New York: Verso, 2020.Google Scholar
Saunders, Steven. “The Social Agenda of Stephen Foster's Plantation Melodies.” American Music 30, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 275–89.Google Scholar
Siebert, Wilbur Henry. The Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroads. Columbus: Long's Book Company, 1951.Google Scholar
Sinha, Manisha. The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jon Michael. Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Spires, Derrick R. The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Kristen M. “‘The Slave Cannot Speak for Himself:’ William Wells Brown, The Antislavery Harp and the Depiction of Enslaved People in the Abolitionist Movement.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Kansas City, MO, March 9, 2019.Google Scholar
Turner, Kristen M. “‘Dandy Jim’ and Racialized Abolitionism.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Music, online, March 12, 2022.Google Scholar
Winch, Julie. Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America from Settlement to the Civil War. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.Google Scholar